


There is More than One Type of Truth

by Wishseeker



Series: Different Perspectives [2]
Category: Transformers - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-17
Updated: 2014-08-17
Packaged: 2018-02-13 14:42:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 10,432
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2154408
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wishseeker/pseuds/Wishseeker
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The war has ended, and yet the problems that led to the war in the first place still exist. There is still corruption and there is still an unwillingness to reveal the truth. One, former decepticon, reporter is told these hard truths in the hope that Cybertron can still be healed.</p><p>Told in the form of (semi) news articles this work portrays the telling of the story of Jazz's past and the struggle of a race, having known war for so long, to heal. It is also about the growing attachment between two individuals that occurs when one bares their soul to the other.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue: What Jazz Read

**Author's Note:**

> Author's Note:
> 
> This is designed to be a companion piece to my work, "The Truth Will Set You Free." While you can read this one before reading the other, there might be parts of this one that are confusing to those who have not read the other.

———————————— There is More than One Type of Truth ————————————

 

**Prologue: What Jazz Read**

 

**THE CYCLIC REPORT  
**

**An Editorial on the Recent Funding Proposals by the Counsel for a Restored Cybertron:**  

There have been a lot of questions about the appropriate use of resources in the rebuilding of Cybertron. It has been stated by the mechs in charge of such things that there simply is no funding or supplies for anything more than “essential projects.” I don’t know about you reader, but who is it that gets to decide what is essential? 

The restoration of public data and access terminals has once more been pushed back. Their argument is that the majority of important news data is broadcast over open channels twice a day and that anyone who misses the downloads can just get them from a friend. 

Dear reader, I implore you to see that this is not enough and to do so, I am going to share with you a story. I have never hidden the fact that I am, or was, depending on who you speak to, a Decepticon. Within cycles of my onlining I was thrown into battle with a blaster in my servo. I watched my fellow soldiers offline before I even had time to fully process what it meant that I was online. I didn’t understand what it meant to have a spark before I was extinguishing the sparks of others. 

For many years within the Decepticon ranks I never dreamed of anything else. Everything was about the next battle, the next kill, because that seemed like the only way to prove you existed, that you mattered. If you were killing then you weren’t being killed, you weren’t forgotten. 

What else was there to dream about, when all any of us knew was war? I wanted things, but they were particle things. A good berth, a few cubes of highgrade for my off shifts, and to online the next cycle in as little pain as possible, those were the extent of my ambitions. I didn’t know anything was missing from my life. 

I learned how wrong I was the first time I saw something awe inspiringly beautiful. I had seen war, and death, and violence and I had so many words for them, but not for this new beautiful, fragile thing.

I didn’t have the words to describe it then, and it is still my most precious memory now. It brought me comfort after battles, taught me in some wordless way that there was more to life than the life I was living. However, I was unable to share it with my brothers in arms. It just wasn’t in my vocabulary. 

I was sparked to be a warrior, I was sparked to fight and die for the Decepticon cause and despite all the access I had to open channels and data files from them, they couldn’t help me. It is impossible to learn new language when you are deeply entrenched in the current one. How could I learn to talk about beauty when all everyone spoke about was death?

I started collecting words after that, reading old data pads on the off shift. Anything I could find  I read, searching for the words that were missing from my vocabulary. My brothers in arms thought it odd, but I was more than strong enough for them to know not to mess with me and some of them even helped me. 

Raids on bases and old forts brought new, sometimes cracked and static filled, data pads into my quarters. The words of old poets and writers taught me about a better Cybertron, they taught me to hope for a better future to not be satisfied to just live one more cycle. 

Mechs ask why public terminals are important. The public terminals are important because they would provide access to all mechs to copies of those works and more. I am not saying that it is more important than fixing energon converters or repairing buildings for habitation, I am just saying that old works changed the life and outlook of this sparked Con. 

How many others are out there struggling to come to terms with peace. How many are struggling every cycle to come to terms with something they just don’t have the words for? How can we change as a race if no one knows how to speak about it?

There are other reasons to repair public terminals of course that I will go over fully in the remainder of this editorial…(Continued on page 5)


	2. An Interview Part I: A Meeting in a Crowded Bar

———————————— There is More than One Type of Truth ————————————

 

**An Interview**

**_Part One: A Meeting in a Crowded Bar_ **

 

_There are some things that vorns of service to the Decepticon Cause as a low level grunt ingrain into the very fabric of your spark._

_One never leave your back open to anyone, even those you might consider a friend._

_Two never question an order or refuse to obey a command of a superior officer, even if you are sure you are going to your death._

_And Three, if you are ever in the same room as a member of the Autobot High Command, you are probably already offline._  

_So when former TIC of the Autobots, Jazz, sat himself down at my table in the crowded bar, I was understandably nervous. I mean, technically the war is over. Technically we are all supposed to be integrating into society. Faction isn’t supposed to matter for all that the Autobots have “won” the war, not for former grunts like me anyway._

_When he first spoke, I admit, I didn’t understand his words. It was, as I mentioned, a crowded bar. It also didn’t help that at the time I was quite simply filled with the overwhelming sensation that this was how my life was going to end, and how I had really been looking forward to trying out life outside of the war for a little longer at least._

_When he spoke a second time, it was with amusement written in the form of a huge grin spread across his face._

 

Jazz - I am not going to kill you, after all I asked you to meet me here. You can relax mech.

 

_Now I will freely admit I had come to the bar expecting an interview. I just didn’t realize at the time who the interview would be with._

_I had received a message about a mech wanting to have his story published in_ _The Cyclic Report_ _. Other writers for our news data burst had recently published several personal stories from interviews that were quite popular. It wasn’t what I normally did, but I thought it couldn’t hurt to at least meet this mech, point him in the correct direction. An Autobot though wasn’t exactly our typical Reader, and Autobots didn’t give interviews to former Cons._

 

R - I am sorry. I think you maybe have made a mistake. I mean, we have several former Autobot writers, and actually my paper is a more Neutral/Con paper. I think you were looking for someone from _The Databurst_. 

 

Jazz - No. I know who you are, I know what paper you are from. I contacted you on purpose, I liked your recent editorial. You are the mech I am looking for to tell my story. So here is the deal. You publish what I say. Exactly like I say it, and I will give you a story that will rock the foundation of everything mechs think they know about the war. You have my word that everything I say will be the whole truth, to the best of my knowledge.

 

R - Just…just like that? I mean. Why would you…I am sorry. I don’t fully understand.

 

Jazz - “How can we change as a race if no one knows how to speak about it?” How can we change as a race if they don’t even know /what/ they should be speaking about? It is simple, I tell you my story, you write it down, you get it out there into the world and to pit with any consequences. 

 

_It took me a moment to recognize my own words being quoted back to me and in the meantime a server drone arrived carrying two cubes of midgrade placing them on the table between the pair of us, a peace offering. I scanned his visor, looking for any sign that this might be a trick or a lie but I couldn’t read him. I had to simply take him at his word. I was willing to take a risk but I had to be sure to._

 

R - Just like this. Right now. You are going to sit here with me and tell me what we should be speaking about in order to be better as a race?

 

Jazz - After a fashion. I am going to tell you the story of my life just like I promised. As much as I can tonight and then I will comm you tomorrow with a place to meet me to hear more. We will continue meeting until I have told you my full story or other circumstances mean that we have to stop. Is it a deal?

 

R - And for this all you want is for me to publish exactly what you say. Word for word.

 

Jazz - Yep. You can dress it up a bit. Add some thoughts or perspectives but my words stay mine. That is important, pit at the end before you publish I will put my personal signature code on it to prove it is what I said. Do we have a deal?

 

_I wasn’t going to say no, even if this turned out to be a trap of some kind or a trick. I couldn’t say no to the chance to tell the story of the Autobot TIC. So I pulled out my writing pad and nodded to him._

_And then he started talking for real. The words of his story came slowly at first but towards the end of the night spilled out of him like coolant from a freshly severed line. This is what he said to me, word for word:_

 

Jazz - I am going to start my story when I was very young. Back then mechs had time to grow up. It wasn’t just a matter of efficiency when mechs thought about creating new life, creators would raise sparklings and younglings allowing coding to mature and integrate naturally. Or most could. There were still factory sparked mechs even back when I was young. I was lucky though, my creators had no interest in a factory sparked mech, they wanted a combination of their own traits, a sparkling to love and cherish. 

And honestly, they could afford it. 

Not that they were high class, or towers mechs. Far from it. I would learn as I grew that my creators ran a massive crime organization. Theymade their credits selling bootleg highgrade and discounted repair supplies. According to the senate and authorities of the time, they were some of the worst of the worst. Crime lords who only cared about exploiting mechs for credits. 

I didn’t grow up hearing that though. I grew up learning instead that enforcer meant danger and that if anyone messed with me all I had to do was find the nearest bar or medical center and ask for help. I roamed the streets of the lower districts far and wide, and as a youngling I never really processed much of what I was seeing as right or wrong. It was; it was just how life was. I didn’t have any idea of a life that was any different. 

It was only once I was a little older that it began to occur to me that most mechs didn’t see the enforcers as the enemy and that maybe it wasn’t normal for sparklings and younglings to spend as much time in bars as I did growing up. I will never forget the first time I went to the upper districts. I couldn't understand why there were no mechs standing on street corners and why everyone’s frame was so much shinier there. It was then that I first began to understand that the world I lived in was not a fair one. That even if my creators and tutors treated all mechs the same that not everyone else would. 

I will never forget the first time I was in a bar my creators owned as it got raided by the enforcers. There was yelling all around and Potshot, the bar tender, grabbed me by the arm and shoved me into a hidden storage compartment. I watched fearfully through a crack near the floor as the enforcers trashed the place. I watched as they beat Potshot mercilessly claiming all the while that he was resisting. 

A mech can’t resist when you have already broken their arm and smashed half their face in. I learned cruelty not from miners or dock workers, I learned it from the enforcers. 

I stayed in that closet, trembling quietly, until eventually the door opened. I panicked until I saw my creator’s face looking so deeply worried and concerned, energon splashed over his frame. I clung to him in a way I hadn’t since I was a much younger sparkling seeking comfort from a spark that knew mine so well. I sobbed in his arms and begged him to help me understand why the enforcers would do something like that. 

He held me and explained to me in hushed words that he and my carrier were considered criminals. That the supplies and energon they sold were below the senate approved costs or being sold in areas not licensed for the sale of highgrade. He told me they were criminals in the optics of the law, he also told me that the law was wrong. The law said what happened to Potshot was ok, but things like that were **never** ok.

He took me to a medical center. One of the ones my creators supplied, and it felt like my optics were finally open. Sure I had been to medical centers before but I had never really took the time to process what I was seeing. As I looked around at the other mechs there receiving treatment, I wondered why the senate would make a law against selling discounted repair supplies. I asked my creator if he didn’t supply the center if they would be able to afford repairs. He told me no. He didn’t bother to polish his words. He told me without what he and my carrier did, these mechs would offline unable to afford senate licensed medics.

I learned that day more about pain and injustice than I ever learned in my days wandering the streets freely, and I begged to be able to help in any way that I could. 

It took a lot of convincing on my part, and some very crucial upgrades, but my creators eventually allowed me to start help by running supplies. 

I carried parts to all types of clinics and homes, and in doing so I learned more and more about the business. The money from the highgrade went to help with supplying parts. The senate painted a dark and seedy picture of my family and their work, but in the lower streets? In the places that were my home my family was respected and beloved. It wasn’t the mechs on the street that were ever a danger to me as I grew up, but that isn’t to say I wasn’t in danger.

The first time I was caught by a pair of enforcers on patrol it took all that I had to just stay calm. There were a few other mechs running with me, but I was the one holding the actual supplies. The thought was they were much less likely to search a youngling than the adults he was with. 

It was two enforcers that were new to the area. One bought the youngling story, but the other watched me and it was like he could read the guilt on my face. He told his partner once the others were loaded into the transport that he would walk me home and then we were alone on the street. 

I thought about running until he told me to show him what I was planning with the supplies. I was so confused then, but I realized later that he was probably my age. Sparked into an adult frame yes, but no older than me, and curious. 

I shouldn’t have taken him to the drop point, but I took him to the clinic anyway. I watched him look around with unreadable optics at the damaged minors inside before he took my servo and pulled me away. He asked me where I lived, and I gave him directions to a bar I liked to stay at. I wasn’t going to tell him where I lived despite the fact he hadn’t arrested me yet. I am still not sure today why I showed him the clinic at all. 

Once at the address he let go of my servo and looked me in the optics. “Next time I have to arrest you.” He said, “Consider this your warning, find a way to be sneaker or stop.” Prowl always was an odd mech you know. I am not sure if he remembers now, or knows that I am the same youngling that he helped. I am certain that he has never broken a rule since, to my knowledge anyway. But he once broke the rules for me, and I have never forgotten that. 

I took his advice to spark though and I got better. I got so good that my creators were able to retire and let me run the family business all on my own. They died a few vorns later from a viral infection that, if the senate had just provided more supplies to the lower districts, could have been stopped. 

It drove me onward, I was determined to continue to run my creator’s business and to continue their work helping mechs. I was inspired to continue, but the senate was getting more and more determined to put a stop to my family. 

 

_He stopped speaking and I suddenly realized how quiet the bar had gotten. I glanced around and saw that for the most part the bar was now empty and the bartenders were in fact starting to clean up. I realized it was probably only my company that kept them from asking us to leave. I looked at the cube in front of me, long since having gone cold, and wasn’t sure what to think. This certainly wasn’t the backstory I expected to hear, butat the same time what he told me didn’t fit with what I saw.Before I could question anything though he stood._

 

Jazz - I will ping you tomorrow’s meeting place, but right now it is late and I need to recharge.

 

_He sauntered out of the bar and what had always seemed to be the movements of an OPS mech was suddenly the swagger of a crime lord. It was the walk of a mech who knew they had nothing to fear and everything in their subspace. I wondered if he had known his story would leave me speechless._

 


	3. An Interview Part II : Meeting in a Ruin

———————————— There is More than One Type of Truth ————————————

 

**An Interview**  

**_Part Two: A Meeting in a Ruin_ **

 

_The next time he asked me to meet him he gave me a set of coordinates I didn’t recognize. They led me into a part of the city that was still destroyed, a part that the restoration efforts hadn’t yet reached._

_It was slowly that I came to recognize it. My recognition came not from any personal experience, but from data files that I had once read. This was the central district. The building he had flagged for our meeting was part of the old senate complex._

_Dilapidated and in ruins the hallways echoed only with the sound of my own steps. Once beautiful murals were in pieces and the flooring was cracked and littered with trash and debris. These halls had once stood as a testament to the glory of the Golden Age, now they were like everything else on Cybertron, damaged and bleeding. I didn’t understand why he would want to meet in a place like this. I would soon wish I didn’t._

_I eventually found him, seated at one of the only unbroken tables in a large central hall._

 

Jazz - This use to be a discussion chamber. Mechs would come here to discuss changes to the law and to discuss the problems of Cybertron. When it is said like that, it sounds like a wonderful thing, but I doubt it was ever as wonderful as that. Not in the Golden Age. Take a seat.

 

R - Yesterday, you were talking about being determined to continue your creator’s work?

 

Jazz - Yes, and I will get back to that, but I want you to do something first. Look around, tell me what you see.

 

_So I did more to humor him than anything, and because I was still very use to taking orders. I told him of the destruction I saw. Of the beautiful monuments torn down. I told him I saw the result of a war, the ugliness left behind by the shedding of energon. And he for a moment looked sad. He shook his head and placed a servo over mine._

 

Jazz - Do you know what I see mech? I see the cause of the war, not the result. I see the polish and dermal patches pulled away and the rot of the Golden Age finally evident. In the days when this hall was beautiful, this is how it should have looked. This is the truth of the Golden Age, hoarded supplies squandered on meaningless beauty for the most elite of society. This doesn’t make me sad, it makes me feel justified. 

I mentioned that the senate was just as determined to stop my family, and really all families like mine, as I was to continue the work I was doing. I was a special a case though. The senate didn’t know I was the one in charge. I had a guard you see, Bullet, and to the world at large it seemed to be him who was controlling the business. 

Not that there was ever any evidence legally against us, but I remembered the enforcer’s warning from my youth and I was being extra cautious. it is a good thing that I was. 

Have you ever heard of Shadow Play? It is pretty well known now, but most still consider it rumors or lies. Autobots assume those lies were spread by Decepticons or Neutral dissenters, most Cons don’t know what to think but they are at least more likely to believe it. 

When people talk about Shadow Play, they assume it only happened to a few mechs, there are after all a few documented and confirmed cases, Shockwave is one. It is surprisingly hard though to rewrite a mech’s entire code. Shockwave was one of the first they tried it on, and you can see how that went. What most mechs don’t know is the senate, after a few mistakes, got very, very good at it. You see they learned the trick wasn’t to erase parts of a personality, or to try to overwrite it. 

The trick to making a disloyal mech newly loyal to you was to go into their personality core and delete all of it. This combined with a virus would result in a completely new personality developing, a new mech in an old frame. What better way to remove your enemies than to place strangers into their bodies after all?

I wouldn’t realize exactly how common it was until much later, but long before that I experienced it through my, through Bullet. He went away on a routine price negotiation. I normally went as well but this time I stayed behind. I had found this lovely medical student who was a thrill to be with and I felt like I deserved a little break. Bullet understood, and was very supportive, he promised me he could handle it and that I did indeed deserve a break.

I don’t know exactly what happened, I was never able to find reports on it. Bullet went to the negotiation, but it wasn’t Bullet who came back from it. A strange new mech returned to me, one who felt and sounded exactly like my Bullet, but was not the same mech. He was confused at first, forgetful, he had forgotten everything. I thought this was the extent of the damage and I was angry, but I thought. I didn’t know about the virus. 

He started calling himself Swindle, and he stopped caring about helping mechs in need. All he cared about was how many credits he could earn. I was forced to kick him out, he started his own business after that but, but it burned me to my very spark. 

Taking away a mech’s memories is a terrible thing, but replacing their root programing with glitches designed to invoke greed, or paranoia, it broke me. I had watched my friend become a monster, and it was in that moment that I began to know what true hate was. I knew what it was to go into recharge at night and wake up the next morning with my spark burning with the fire of revenge. I no longer cared about my creator’s empire, all I cared about was stopping the senate. 

This was the same time that the protests started in ernest. Your faction wasn’t called the Decepticons back then, well they were but it wasn’t a tittle the same way it is now. And they were peaceful, for the most part. I mean they were rowdy, mostly minors and laborers. They spoke out agains the corruption of the senate and the Golden Age. They had simple demands, reform within the senate, better labor practices, safer conditions, and a higher wage. The senate’s response was swift and harsh. A lot of what was done is already on record, but other things that were done were never put into any official record. 

For instance, the first actual attacks by the Decepticons weren’t by them at all. They were staged by the senate to attempt to pull support away from the cause, to attempt to paint the Decepticons in a negative light. 

In many ways they succeeded in that. I am not saying every mech who joined up with the cons was innocent in the beginning, but then not every mech who joined up with the bots was innocent either. The mechs I consider true Autobots and true to the ideals there, they wouldn’t take charge of the ranks until the last of the senate was offline. Even now though they are still touched by that corruption. 

 

R - War seems like a much more complicated thing than it did when I was sparked into it.

 

Jazz - Yeah. Sorry about that mech, neither side made your generation’s lives any easier. 

I want you to know that I started out the war helping the Decepticon cause. Mostly when it was still protests by suppling energon and supplies, but I quickly realized there was another way I could help, possibly end the fighting. 

The Senate was looking for trained infiltration and intelligence mechs. They needed them for their army they were building. I thought that if I signed up I would be able to get closer to them. My goal was to feed secrets back to the cons and to maybe take out a few of the senators with my own servos. 

I was an idiot.

I mentioned before that the Senate had gotten better at Shadow Play than most mechs know. They learned that even implanting a virus was not as effective as it could be. They learned the best way to reshape a mech was to do it by servo, so to speak. They found the best results came when they would wipe a personality core and then train them to be what they wanted. If you tell a mech enough times that they are a certain way, what choice do they have to be anything different? 

I proved myself by passing their infiltration tests, and they told me I had one last test before they accepted me into the ranks. Just a medical check up, nothing to worry about. 

When I online they informed me my name was Jazz, that I had had a training accident but that it was alright. They would take the time to retrain me. They had gotten better at Shadow Play. They could now take away a mech’s self and memories but leave all their skills intact. I still don’t remember what my name was before they reprogramed me. 

I can see the question on your face mech. A friend once explained to me that no matter what the spark remembers. He told me we may be coding and wires and interchangeable parts, but there is more to what makes us up than that. There is a lot we don’t know about the spark. There is a lot we don’t understand about it’s ability to hold onto memories. 

I remember everything I told you like I watched it on a vidscreen. I can remember how intensely I loved Bullet like a faint after image imprinted on my optics from staring at the same screen for to long. I am aware of what they took from me and I am aware I will never fully get those memories back. It is hard to be angry when what you remember being angry about is so faint. 

 

R - So how, if you were erased…you are saying your spark held onto the memories?

 

Jazz - Some of them. Others I eventually hacked from the senate files. It comes back slowly you see. For me it started as dreams, an odd sense that the name Jazz wasn’t what I had been called as a youngling. 

I recognized the faces of mechs before I ever met them. I hacked the senate databases to make sure. I was able to confirm it, but it was vorns latter. They listed their reason for the wipe as…wanting to give me a new chance of life. There were paragraphs describing how terrible my youngling hood must have been and how it would be better if I just didn’t have to remember any of that. 

I killed the three remaining members of the senate in a bombing raid after reading that. They decided in their infinite wisdom that it was ok to change me and take away the parts of me that made me who I was. It was ok to turn me into nothing more than a tool for them. I have work extensively sense to restore my memories and to assist anyone who I found to have been forced to undergo the same procedure. 

But I am Jazz now. I will never be who I was before I was Jazz again. I can remember him and I can know empirically that he was me, but I wasn’t prepared for the hack then. And so I am Jazz and my loyalty will always be torn. 

  

_After that statement my own processor was reeling. I had just listened as this mech lay bare before me the injustices that had been forced upon him by his own faction. I wondered how he could still call himself an Autobot knowing they had forced him to forget. I wondered how it felt to realize your loyalty might well have been forced upon you. I felt a sudden kinship as I realized I knew exactly what it felt like to have loyalty forced upon you._

 

Jazz - Reprogramming it works in odd ways even after you remember. I can remember the pain they caused me, but I also remember the years I served them fatefully. It creates a kind of split personality, a dual loyalty. It is so easy to just forget what came before. Because honestly, some truths are easier to accept than others. 

It is easier to accept the official truth, to forget the past, then it is to realize all you have known for vorns has been part of a lie. I have helped mechs before who couldn’t handle the distinction. Mechs who instead repressed the spark memories. It is never pretty.

  

_The silence that followed was deafening. Suddenly the building we were in made much more sense. I knew why he wanted to meet here, this building didn’t just represent the corruption of the past to him coming to light, it represented his own torn loyalties. Because looking around one could regret the loss of beauty, while still knowing that the fact the beauty had existed at all was because of terrible things. It was the rot coming into view, when before it had been hidden._

_I leaned it was possible to regret the loss of a lie, even when you knew the truth would be terrible. Especially when you knew the truth would be terrible._

_I was so lost in my own thoughts I didn’t notice Jazz’s departure this time. I figured he needed time himself. After all, what he shared couldn’t have been easy. I walked out of the building disoriented, and feeling wholly unprepared for what I had learned but able to push it aside for now. There would be time later to think on it I convinced myself._

 


	4. An Interview Part III: A Final Meeting

———————————— There is More than One Type of Truth ————————————

 

**An Interview**  

**_Part Three: A Final Meeting_**

 

_We met many more times after that. But there are parts of his story that were not his alone to tell, parts that though I believed him I needed more evidence to back up the claims he made. Parts I am hesitant to believe are real myself. And through all our meetings I will admit I found myself falling deeper and deeper in love with this brave spark._

_I will admit I am a stranger to love, it wasn’t something that fostered easily within the ranks of the Decepticons. I cannot tell you if my love was a true one, one born from a deep respect, or if it was born out of a desire to cling to someone who didn’t look at me and see only my faction symbol. Maybe it was born from a desire to cling to the first mech willing to speak so openly and honestly with me that I felt I knew him like I knew my own spark._

**_I do not know him like I know my own spark._ ** _Even as he spoke to me I know he held some things back, facts and names that his torn loyalties refused to let him share. There is more to his stories than he had time to share with me, there is much I feel he never would have shared._  

_My last meeting with Jazz I met him in an old bunker. I had long since stopped being nervous about our meetings but when I reached the room it was clear to see he was highly agitated. If I had known this was to be our last meeting, I would have maybe asked some different questions. Hindsight as they say, is 20/20._

 

R - Thisisn’t one of our normal meeting locations. Is something wrong?

 

Jazz - No mech. Just a special night. Now I was telling you something last time wasn’t I?

 

R - Jazz I can read you fairly well. Something is wrong. Tell me.

 

_I placed my servo on his arm and he jerked back, I realized that I had never initiated contactbetween the pair of us before. He had touched me but never I him. I hadn’t felt like it was something that was allowed. With the jerk I realized maybe it wasn’t. But slowly he reached out to me and pulled me closer. He looked into my optics, slowly retracting his visor so that I could look into his._

_When it happened it was in a rush, there was no slow motion or harmonious joining. We fell into each other like the other was all we had been searching for, for vorns. It was wonderful, beautiful, and it breaks my spark that I will never know if it was an act between lovers, or the act of a desperate mech. It breaks my spark that I can’t bring myself to care which it was. For that moment we had each other, and that moment well…it isn’t enough but it is more than I thought I would ever have._

_But the purpose of this isn’t to tell my story. Rather it is to tell his as I am the only one that can._

_Breathless, pressed against me, the last of his story came out in a quiet whisper against my neck at my own urging._

  

Jazz - When I talked before, about the Autobot command being corrupt, I am not talking about the current command. I remembered among a group of leaders who were not the same as the ones who had decided to take away my memories. I have told you about their crimes, and they are not many, but they should be seen. 

Optimus Prime is in no way like his predecessor, he is not like the senate, but it does not mean he is perfect. There are a few instances where outside influences have led him astray, but for the most part I respect him. If he had been in charge from the beginning, maybe the senate’s corruption would have been stopped long ago. But maybe not, he is just one mech after all and he has shown in the past few orns that he is capable for falling for the same lies the senate spread to everyone else. 

 

R - He is the reason you didn’t rejoin the Decepticons after finding out they had wiped your memory?

 

_He had always strayed away from this topic before so in our other conversations I learned to give it a wide berth._

 

Jazz - I guess. Also because by then the Decepticons I had joined weren’t the same mechs. They had been pushed too far by the senate, and there was no going backwards for them. The Autobots had new leadership, and that leadership seemed to want the same things I did. 

 

R - What was that? 

 

Jazz - For the war to be over. Optimus and I spoke many times about the senate being held responsible, even postmortem as it would be, for their crimes. He spoke with me about setting the wrongs right. We spoke about forgiveness, about a better, a united Cybertron. 

 

R - You talk like…

  

Jazz - Prowl calls it politics. I was blinded by my own desperate need for someone trustworthy. Optimus was a war leader, and he had big dreams, but now in peace he doesn’t have the political skills to back them up. 

That is why I am here, with you. There are events that the current leaders do not want aired. Actions that the Autobots took that were just as wrong as the ones they are putting the Decepticons on trialfor committing.

And I have been told that if I do this they will arrest me. I have been told that telling this story will destabilize the fragile peace we have constructed here. But I think the truth needs to be said, the truth deserves to come out for all the mechs who have had the truth stolen from them. 

 

R - But, I don’t understand. I, are you telling me that..

 

Jazz (laughing) - Yes, when they catch me I will be punished. Prowl has already made that clear, if I can’t keep my mouth shut they will shut it for me.

I am sure they already have my location by now. I expect them here any klick actually. We will have warning though. It will take them sometime to get through the door.

 

_A servo, stroked my cheek and I wasn’t sure if I was making up the tremor that ran through it or not as it did so._

 

Jazz - Don’t worry. I already have an escape route for you to follow. I won’t let you get caught up in this. 

 

R - I think I am already caught up in it. 

 

_I sat up quickly, pulling away from him. It was hard to process all of this now. Hard to understand._

 

R - You claim to still be loyal to them, but they are willing to do the very thing that made you hate the original senate! How can you be ok with this? Why aren’t you running? Fighting?

 

Jazz - I am fighting, but I am so tired. I am tired of being caught up in a cycle of war an violence, so much so sometimes I wonder if at our core as a race if that is all we are good for. 

But then I meet nice young mechs who just want a better life for themselves and realize no. It is just the cycle that we are stuck in. 

That is why I am doing this. To break the cycle. I am fighting back with my words *******. I am fighting back through you.

 

R - But they are going to, they will take away who you are again! You might never get your memories back this time. 

 

_He grinned, but didn’t answer. Or rather maybe his grin was his answer, because I realized I was sitting across from a mech prepared to do exactly that. He was prepared to lose everything in order for a chance that the truth would be told. I had fallen in love with a mech prepared to offline._  

_—————_

_I watched as he prepared for the others to come. Sealing the door and preparing some data chips and downloads for me to take with me. When he spoke again it was in a rushed, distracted type of way. The way a mechs speaks when he knows each word might be his last._

 

Jazz - I don’t know if Prowl honestly believes what he is doing is best, or is somewhere along the way they altered his coding to make him like he is. He certainly has glitches that point towards the days of the early coding patches the senate tried. 

I don’t want to believe he is like them, not when he holds a part of my spark I thought I lost with Bullet. Or I thought he held it. He hurt me, recently, by hurting one of my friends. I swore when i started this project I would stop giving away pieces of my spark. It hurt me too much. I should have maybe kept that promise, I didn’t want to hurt anyone like I was hurt with Bullet.

But even if this is not the way Prowl would have chosen to behave it is how he makes his decisions now. He does not see it as wrong, just as necessary. Prowl sees everything in black and white. Most of the older soldiers do because the have to. There isn’t any room for gray in war that stretches on into millennia.

He can’t see that many of the crimes of the past need to be recognized in order for Cybertron to heal. 

Mechs should know nobody got away with clean servos in this war, no matter what they want to claim. I won’t see things go back to the way they were before because that is what will happen if we continue on this rode. Already there is talk of legislation that will make former Decepticons nothing but second class citizens. When this gets out, we can be sure the neutrals won’t vote for it, and maybe some of the Autobots will realize the truth themselves and do the honorable thing. 

 

_He paused and spun towards me suddenly, a jerking motion out of place in his normal fluidity._

 

Jazz - I didn’t want to hurt you. You are too young to be hurt by a mech like me. I can’t make the hurt I am leaving you with better. Nothing I say will make it better and I still have so much more to ask of you.

 

_He took my servo in his and held it tightly, as if that hold could say all the things that we didn’t have time for the pair of us to say to each other. We didn’t have time to figure out the words and all I could think of was that beautiful, fragile thing I had first seen all those years ago and compare it to this new, beautiful, fragile thing, that I didn’t have the words for either._

 

Jazz - So I can I trust you with protecting the future of us as a people? Can I trust you to protect your kin?

 

_He pressed a data chip into my servo I could see in his optics he was searching for something within me, and I don’t know if he found it. All the same he pulled his servo away leaving the chip behind. His servo leaving mine felt like the ending of something not yet begun, an organic plant withering on the vine._

 

Jazz - That is all the evidence you need to do it. And I am trusting you to make sure it gets out there. And considering all I have told you it is probably the most dangerous thing anyone will ever ask you to do. 

And your generation has already been asked to do so very much. Much more than anyone your spark age should ever have to do. 

 

R - Why me? Why trust me with this? You didn’t even know me then. And don’t just say my writing. Anyone could write.

  

_There was a sad smile and then a sudden pounding against the door to the room, the sound of a welding torch attacking seals. Our time was quickly coming to an end._

 

Jazz - We don’t have a lot of time left. There is a medic we talked about before, you should go see him. He can maybe tell you more, give you some of the closure I am sure you are needing. As for why I choose you, I choose you ******* because you were saying all the words I wanted to be able to say. Because you and your generation deserves so much more than what you have been dealt. 

 

_The look on his face told me there was much more to that story but the banging was getting louder now and our time was growing ever shorter. I didn’t want my time with this mech to end. I didn’t want to be the last mech he spoke to this honestly, I didn’t want the burden of being the only one to remember his past when he was gone. Because I suddenly realized that was exactly the burden he had lain upon my shoulders without my even realizing it._

 

Jazz - I know there is more I needed to share with you and I wish I had more time to do it. You are a smart mech though. I am sure you will find what you need. I just want you to promise me you will get this story out there. That you will let mechs know.

 

_He moved across the room prying the ventilation panel off of the wall. And motioned me to hurry over. Quickly he helped me into the vent despite my protests and sealed the grate back onto the wall after me. There was a pause, as he looked at me through the vent and then one more data chip slipped through the grates._

 

Jazz - When you go see the medic, give him that. Now you better go. Don’t get caught. I would hate for all the work I put into this to be ruined. 

 

_He turned around and I stayed quiet in the vent as four mechs burst into the room. They bound him in stasis cuffs, and Jazz didn’t even protest. He stood proud in that tiny room, and walked away with them with his helm held high. He walked like he walked after our first meeting. He walked like a mech with nothing and everything to hide. The perfect image of a martyr who knew what was waiting for him at the end of the walk but no longer cared._

_I followed the vents out. I stumbled my way out into the city streets, pavement still littered with potholes and chunks of missing concrete from artillery fire and bombs. Building wearing temporary braces like derma patches, ugly but healing. I was near the old senate building. I looked at it, at the repair scaffolding and I felt sick to my tank._

_Cybertron was supposed to be healing, but I now knew the rot was sill there at it’s core. I felt likeone of the 13 from the old stories. The one who first discovered the betrayal who pulled back the curtain and saw not paradise but a gaping maw of darkness and deceit. I had been feeling like this for a while now, but now with the knowledge that only my writings existed as a record of it hit me all the harder._

_And I sat on that street corner for a long time because suddenly there were wounds in the world that I didn’t know how to heal. Cracks in the tender foundations of our peace that I wasn’t sure all the derma patches in the world could weld together. There was a difference between knowing about past actions and now knowing nothing had actually changed at all. It was different hearing about the past and seeing it reach it’s terrifying, dark claws forward into the future. And I wanted to crush the data chip in my servo. I wanted to forget. Because like Jazz had told me, some Truths were easier than other to accept._

_If I choose to forget about Jazz would I be happier? Would I be able to repress the memories like a mech coming back from a reprogramming? Would I be safer?_

_Jazz walked away from our interaction like a martyr his head held high that he had done his best to get the truth out into the world. I walked away feeling like bombing victim, shell shocked and empty feeling as if something beautiful had been torn from me and in it’s place the knowledge of something dark and terrible was left behind._

 


	5. An Interview Part IV: After the Interview, or Finding Closure

———————————— There is More than One Type of Truth ————————————

 

**An Interview**  

**_Part Four: After the Interviews, or Finding Closure_**  

_I don’t know what made me seek out that medic. I had already released more than enough information over the news networks to put me on more than a few hit lists I was sure. I don’t know why I decided to do this follow up._  

_I do know, that I am glad that I did. War is a terrible thing. We watched our friends and comrades die, and for many of us we never got true closure. I think that is what made me seek out the medic Jazz had mentioned. Because the war was over now and we were supposed to be able to do and get what we wanted. Including closure for things that changed our lives irreversibly. Things we didn’t have names for._

_My life is still changed irreversibly. Closure I have found isn’t about patching up a wound like it wasn’t ever there._

_Closure isn’t about giving a matching wound to your enemy. Because sometimes, you don’t have an enemy._

_Closure is about learning to live with new scars._

_Walking into the medbay was a nerve-wracking experience. Yes we were at peace, and yes I no longer wore the Decepticon brand but plenty of the mechs around me still wore their Autobot ones proudly. And there was the ever present fear of servos in a dark ally, of waking up and no longer remembering anything. Of being unable to keep my promises._

_There were no servos, there was no darkness. It was clear these mechs did not know me. However, my red optics were all the evidence the older mechs there needed for my crimes. There were more than a few comments about how didn’t my “own kind” have their own medics? And was I lost?_

_Was I lost? They had no idea how lost I truly was._

_The younger generation, my generation, was mostly silent. But I could tell they were listening. They weren’t wearing their brands either, but their optics were blue. No matter how they felt, they could pass here. By being silent they could avoid conflict. I could see in their optics a desire for the war to just go away. So they faded into the background even as derogatory comments were made because they were just as tired as I was and they had never known anything different._

_I suddenly remembered all to clearly the stories I had been told by Decepticons who had lived before the war. And I felt sick as the rot that had destroyed us the first time was clearly still there. Still festering._

_Eventually I was taken into the back and I recognized the medic based on what I had read from the reports. Reports that had turned my own spark and filled me with anger and fear. Fear for anyone who spoke out. Fear if I was honest, for myself._

 

Medic - Well why are you here? I don’t allow gawkers in my medical bay. Now tell me what is wrong and I will patch you up?

 

R - Sorry. I was told to bring you something.

 

_I passed him the second data chip Jazz had given me and watched the medic look it over before plugging it into his arm. So trusting that it wasn’t going to harm him despite my optic color. But then Medics have some of the greatest firewalls around. If those firewalls could be breached to remove a personality core what chance did a normal mech have?_

_I watched him tense and then look me over again as if he wasn’t quite sure what to do with me._

  

Medic - Right. Come with me. I will put you in an isolation room.

 

_He drug me away and I started to protest until I realized that others had been listening in. This would at least give us some privacy. Behind the sealed doors of the isolation room he looked me over again._

  

Medic - Have you read over the other documents he gave you?

 

R - Yes. 

 

_The word fell from my lips before I had time to think, and suddenly I realized what the critical looks were bout. This mech, who had faced the same punishment as Jazz for his stance on the war. I wondered at the difference in the two cases, I wondered who he had to remember his story now that Jazz was forgotten. The documents I had on his case weren’t entirely clear. Just clear enough to show how grey the lines were._

 

R - Yes. I am sorry.

 

Medic - No. Don’t be sorry. I have had enough time I remember a lot now and Jazz helped me a lot with remembering. He managed to keep some of my files safe when they forced him to do the wipe on me.

I haven’t gotten everything back yet, but I have enough.

  

_It wasn’t said in a resigned way, but in a way that showed just how much he was hiding from others. It was odd watching this mech chance in front of me, but it also filled me with hope._

 

R - So Jazz will remember too?

 

Medic - This is his second wipe. It is more complicated for him, but he has always been a fighter. Anyway wait here. There is someone who you will want to see. 

 

_He left, and I don’t know how long I waited in that room before a different door opened and in stepped a silver visored mech. It took me a moment, the frame was the same but so different from the black and white coloring of before._

 

Mech - Hi. Name’s Playback. Medic said you were here and would want to meet me. 

 

_As I looked into the optics of what had once been Jazz, despite having just been given evidenceto the contrary in the form of the medic I feared that he had been wrong. I feared that the mech who showed me the hard truth was lost forever. His very stance was different after all, younger. He didn’t look like a mech who had told me how deep the rot went. He didn’t have the same optics as the one who pressed the truth into my servo and held it tightly._

_And I tensed because I didn’t want a mech willing to risk himself for the truth, for the good of Cybertron, to be gone. I suddenly understood in a new way Jazz’s feelings about Bullet. This mech was not Jazz, for all he looked like him._

_I wondered how long it would take for him to remember. If he remembered his time as Jazz would he still remember the even fainter memories of his time before his first reprograming? I was stuck in my silent wondering when he spoke again._

 

Playback - I am not going to kill you. You can relax mech.

 

_And he grinned and I knew I shouldn’t have doubted him._

_Maybe he didn’t remember everything, but that grin said more than words could ever have. That which there wasn’t words for yet between us suddenly felt alive again. I don’t know where things will go from here. I don’t know when you dear reader will next hear from me. But I think it will be soon and I pray you are prepared to hear the truth I share with you._

_I pray if you have memories that don’t make sense. If you recognize faces or know the names of mechs before you meet them, I pray you will look beyond the easy truths. I pray you find the words to speak about all the things within your life, good and bad._

_I pray that together we are able to root out the rot of Cybertron, because it is only after this is done that we will all be able to heal. Until next time._

_\- *******_

 


	6. Epilogue: What Prowl Had To Say

———————————— There is More than One Type of Truth ————————————

 

**Epilogue: What Prowl Had To Say**

 

**THE DATABURST**  

**“We Did The Right Thing” Claims Autobot SIC**

“We did the right thing,” stated Prowl, SIC of the Autobots and the mech in charge of many of the rebuilding projects. “The fact that these stories are coming to light in the way they are is upsetting and lacks many of the facts necessary to make accurate conclusions.” He was of course referring to the many articles recently published by our competing news source _The Cyclic Report._ As we here at _The DATABURST_ are always attempting to gain the full truth from both sides of the story, we approached Prowl for an interview in the wake of many of the events of the war that have recently come to light.

The first question we asked Prowl dealt with the most recent claims of the paper that under his order the TIC of the Autobots was recently reprogrammed. 

“TIC Jazz was disciplined in a way that would both allow him to continue to live a full life in this time of peace while also removing any sensitive information that he wished to share in an untimely manner. The Autobot command has been working on a time table so that many facts of the war can be released to the public. We are not attempting to hide anything, it is just that at this time with the war not very far behind us there are secrets that are needed to be kept for the safety of mechs involved. We understand and recognize that this is frustrating to the public but we are doing out best to expedite information release.” 

As a former neutral in this war, I find _The Cyclic Report’_ s articles to be upsetting, however having no experience with war beyond avoiding it myself I find myself questioning both the authenticity and the journalistic integrity of _The Cyclic Report_ ’s article entitled simply “ An Interview.” 

Primarily this has to do with the style in which the article was written, as well as the clear relationship between the writer, who fails to ever give us his own name, and the former TIC. While the Autobot command does not deny certain aspects of this article are true, they have claimed it to be, as a whole inflammatory and designed by a former Decepticon to cause the most harm possible. This is clearly the case as the entire article is clearly written in a manor designed to invoke a reaction from the reader. 

“We have asked _The Cyclic Report_ to cease and desist publishing materials related to Autobot actions in the war without the consent of the Autobot high command as this puts all of our current actions and goals of peace on very fragile footing. Much of the information they present is one-sided, and biased. The facts of the cases published so far are multifaceted and not something that can be clearly understood from reading the reports alone,” Prowl insisted. When asked if he would be willing to comment directly on individual reports he gave a resounding yes.

“If they feel they must publish such reports, it would be better for them to do so with honest commentary from members of our command staff who had to make these decisions. Some of the decisions discussed, including the recent one with Jazz were difficult and spark breaking decisions born of great need and a desire to preserve life.”

Prowl and the rest of the Autobot command have provided us with several statements as well as evidence to run along beside the articles currently being published by our rival news source. 

Clearly this is a matter that will not be settled easily but as always the goals of _The DATABURST_ is to provide you the reader with the most accurate information possible. We will continue to do this to the best of our ability, despite the actions of our competitors.

 

For more information about the interview as well as official statements about the current leaks _Continue on Page 3._  

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Author's Note:
> 
> So this is designed to be a companion piece to my other work "The Truth Will Set You Free." In this work I continued to explore different forms of narrative by attempting to write something like you might read in a news journal or magazine, and I don't think I quite hit that mark. 
> 
> Still I hope you will enjoy it.
> 
> Additionally this work was written much more quickly than the previous work and did not have the beta that the first one did. If you see any errors, please tell me. I am well aware of my tendencies to make errors, but that doesn't mean I can always spot them. 
> 
> Once again I don't really own any of the characters I am using here. I am just using them to play around with different types of writing.


End file.
